Issue date
Yachting New Zealand held the biennial Safety Inspectors Conference at the RNZYS on Saturday 27 August with 31 Inspectors gathering, from as far north as the Bay of Islands and as far south as Christchurch.
Yachting New Zealand actively promotes safety in the sport and the Safety Inspectors are a key component for the keel boat community.
Angus Willison, Yachting New Zealand’s Safety & Technical Officer reports;
The Safety Inspectors are very experienced offshore sailors and in most cases have a professional connection to the yachting industry as builders, designers, riggers, sail makers, safety equipment service people or professional sailors. The Safety Inspection service is genuinely ‘by sailors for sailors’ with Inspectors freely giving their time and experience for modest reward.
The conference was opened by the Yachting New Zealand Chief Executive, David Abercrombie who was fresh back from Rio. It’s always good to get a broader perspective on the world of yachting and Dave is certainly able to provide that!
This year there were a range of speakers including our own Bob Wilson, an Inspector with 46 years’ experience, who people will know from Brin Wilson Boats. Bob was closely connected to the recent ‘Platino’ disaster and was able to present and discuss the various issues as he saw them.
Maritime New Zealand presented an update of their situation which I think was enlightening to some Inspectors closely connected to the issues facing commercial operators.
Sally Garrett from RAYC provided a fantastic update on the safety learnings from the ANZ Sail Fiji Race. Sally and the team at RAYC have worked tirelessly to run an event with the highest safety standards and we were lucky enough to have Sally’s analysis on what went well and what we could have improved on.
The majority of the afternoon was spent discussing proposed rule changes for the Safety Regulations of Sailing 2017 – 2020 which will come into effect on 1 January 2017. Many thanks to those Inspectors that put time and effort into researching the practicalities surrounding changing some of the regulations.
The last speaker of the day was Carl Omundsen who is the Chief Engineer and a Director of Vesper Marine who are an international success story in the AIS industry. It was absolutely fascinating to be given an overview of the capabilities of AIS and gain some understanding of the potential. We allocated Carl and hour and over and hour and a half later people were still asking questions!
All in all a very successful learning experience for all involved.
